What's Missing When Women Lead

               In Durango we have a sizable crew of leaders embarking on the journey into tango dancing. Most are men but some are women. I’ve seen many ladies assume the role of leader but I’ve witnessed very few who are capable of making the connection necessary for true tango to happen. Leading a dance in tango is much more than simply changing hand positions, it takes a commitment.

               It is my belief that women are better at exacting promises from their male counterparts than they are at making them. If a lady intends to lead she must accept the responsibility of the role but she needs something more. Allow me to explain what that ‘something more’ may be.  

               If a man has sex with a woman a baby can result. When we were just monkeys swinging in our trees, our emotions and the scarcity of available mates were all that was required to keep us hanging around after insemination. 

               Once homo sapiens invented fire, men discovered the ladies of the night and things changed. Men searched in the darkness for more sexual encounters and women began work on the foundations of civilization.

               The obligation of the father to provide for his child was a chief concern for the girls who laid the groundwork for the rule of law. With the invention of the wheel and the arrival of Man’s BFF, the dog, enterprising males constantly endeavored to change the rules. 

               I honestly believe we would be extinct as a species if sheep could give blowjobs. The last man on earth would have happily ended his days as a shepherd in the Caucasus Mountains twenty-five thousand years ago, with no woman to mourn him and a large herd of sheep trying to get out of the corral.

               As creative as men were in pleasing themselves, women were equally imaginative in their ways to keep us around to help raise their offspring. They invented commerce and money so the shepherd had a place to take his sheep when their numbers grew too great. Conveniently, by design and not by chance, he also had a way to get enough money to buy himself some oral satisfaction from the girls in town who busied themselves with another concoction of theirs: wine.

               Women sorely regretted their creation of alcohol but that’s another story for another time; we’re talking about what it takes to become a leader of a tango dance so let’s not get distracted.

               When I decided to dance tango I didn’t know where to find it. Living in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania I found plenty of people willing to take my money for what they called ‘tango lessons’. I started my search in October 2005 and didn’t find a ‘real’ tango instructor until February of 2006, four months after I began my search in earnest.

               Until I discovered tango, I had been attending ballroom dance classes at a studio run by professional dancers. I had two left feet when I started. Having one of those feet changed into a right foot cost a lot of money. It was an expensive operation but it had to be done. I was a single parent raising two girls and I was lonely. If I didn't come up with a solution soon, my loneliness would have driven me into the arms of a cigarette-smoking, drunken hillbilly senorita who might kill me in my sleep after I finished cleaning the Stygian Stables and diverting the Nile River into the Red Sea. 

               There were a few women interested in me before I learned to dance but, when I interviewed for the position of sexual favor recipient, I was hit with a request for commitment to complete a long list uninteresting assignments. The list was usually very well presented as the simplest of Herculean Tasks, and, if I had actually been Hercules, the jobs would indeed have been very easy to complete.

               A younger man would have taken the bait and been hooked into an arrangement consisting of many brutal tortures and boring ceremonies involving in-laws and PTA meetings. If I hadn’t been so busy cooking dinners and washing clothes, I might have had time to fall for their feminine wiles. I see now that this was a good thing. At the time, however, it was excruciatingly painful to walk away from the bargaining table.

               Eventually, my need for female companionship forced me to arrive at some sort of compromise with my emotional obligations to parenting. A compromise is almost like a real promise with writing in the sidelines indicating where the exit is. 

               And so I began my journey into the world of dance.

               Women arrive at the leadership role in dance as novices in the game of commitment as experienced by men; recent advancements in the global communities of governance on the recognition of same-sex marriages gives me hope this will no longer be the case.

               A lady endeavoring to lead another woman to tango music has an advantage over her male competitors: she is genetically engineered for multitasking and a man is not. 

               Pay attention now because this is where things get real complicated.

               The necessity of commitment arises from the man’s inability to multitask: to hear the music, choreograph movements to the melody and to convey his plan to his partner. This is happening continuously. To make it even harder, throw in a room full of other dancers of various skills and then add navigation to that list.

               Fortunately for the guys, we already know where we’re going so we don’t have to navigate. Unfortunately for the girls, we often steer them into other people or walls, even steel beams…sorry:-(

               An educated man might make the assumption that women make better leaders. Luckily I am not educated and therefore am not burdened with the usual impediments that accompany an advanced degree in learning. This lack of mental clutter allows me to see how much women, when playing the role of follower, appreciate the hard work and dedication I have put into my tango training. I am equally appreciative when the follower has spent her own free time practicing the movements that help maintain balance and enable embellishments to be performed within the context of my lead.

               A man’s road to gaining the ability to multitask while dancing is much longer than a woman’s. As in all things in life, success that is earned is always much more rewarding than a success that is inherited. When a follower dances with a man who has come by his skills the hard way she responds by releasing the ingredients necessary to make a powerfully addictive drug. The embrace of two such participants creates a delivery system that bypasses the bloodstream and injects the aphrodisiac directly into their souls for a truly cosmic experience.

                This is true tango. It is a phenomenon that keeps us coming back like the emotional junkies that we are. 

                I'm not saying a woman is incapable of adding this kind of element to a tango dance that she leads. I'm just saying it is a rare thing...and it should be. For such an event to be a common occurrence would lessen the meaning for that truly exceptional woman who put so much hard work into becoming a leader of the dance.


Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango